


get back up

by Anonymous



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen, Nightmares, Past Sexual Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, venting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-21 23:45:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13751709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Prompto struggles to recover from past trauma.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is a vent piece, meaning this is based on personal experience and this is me basically projecting onto my favorite character lol so leave if you're not comfortable with that.

It starts with his mother.

“I’ve been talking with your stepfather,” she says, as if she isn’t just about to uproot his entire life. “And we were talking about getting back together.”

He can say nothing to that. The words fail him. He stands there watching her cook as his stomach knots itself in anxiety.

.

Or maybe it starts when he and his mother move out of the house they had shared with his stepfather for years. They pack their things and are out the same night. They stay with a friend of his mother’s for a couple weeks until they manage to find their own place after hours upon hours of searching.

They check out the house on a Friday. The landlord is unable to speak clear Lucian but he brings his kids along to help out and they buy the house the next day. His mother, trying not to cry, smiles when she looks at him and says, “We found a house, baby.”

He smiles too and it's the most genuine its been in a while.

Or maybe it starts when his mother first meet his soon-to-be stepfather. He doesn't remember it all that well, only being seven, but distantly recalls him first entering the house for the first time.

From there, the relationship progresses fast.

They move into a house together only a few months later. Then they move again when they can't afford to stay living there. Then again when the landlord kicks them out because he had promised the house to his cousin. Then they move again when they can't afford this house either. Then his mother and him get kicked out.

It's an eventful twelve years.

Maybe it started during those twelve years on one fateful night when his stepfather had followed him to his room and --

He doesn’t know. All he knows is his stepfather is trying to back together with his mother and he can do nothing about it.

.

She doesn't notice his anxiety but she notices his silence. She pauses her stirring and reaches over the stove to the knobs, turning one of them off, and then she turns to him, hands on her hips. “Well?”

Prompto doesn't know what to say to that. So he says nothing, just shrugs.

“Don't ‘I don't know’ me, just say what's on your mind,” she snaps.

He's always had a problem with that. He shrugs again but straightens up from his position leaning on the counter. “If it's what you want,” he says, the words bitter on his tongue. It doesn't matter what he wants.

She stares at him, not quite believing him, Prompto suspects. It works though.

“Okay,” she says. She turns back to the stove and Prompto leaves as soon as he's out of her sight to the living room. He settles onto the couch and pretends to watch TV, but he picks at the skin around his nails and bounces his leg nervously.

He regrets coming to dinner tonight. He should have stayed home, made some bullshit excuse about work or something, and avoided all this.

What was he thinking, coming here? What if his stepfather had come?

The heat of the house starts to become too much for him and he stands up as breathing grows difficult and his hands begin to shake. The room feels as though it's growing smaller. He needs to get out. He stumbles around the couch and barely makes it to the front door before he's gasping for breath and fighting the black edges around his vision, and he collapses onto the steps of the front porch where the fresh air and outside noise is enough to distract him from the panic growing in his head. He didn't grow up here, but the area is familiar enough that he is calmed by it's sight.

He remembers this street well. There are dogs in every yard that bark whenever you walk by, and there's the abandoned house where the door still sits wide open, and then a couple walking down the street on the sidewalk.

Watching all this, it's enough to calm him. He is able to forget his fear if only for a moment.

.

Noctis was unaware of any of this happening. Still doesn't know they were kicked out, or that he had moved at all, and that was intentional. He didn't need any pity.

And not to mention it was embarrassing. Both for himself and his mother. The last thing he needed was Noctis, the _prince of Lucis_ knowing he was kicked out and also too poor to afford any other house than the broken, rundown one his mother was able to find. Or that he lived in what was known as the Niff district, a place to undesirable that even he did not want to be seen there. The place was small but well known among Lucians for being as rundown as the house they were renting.

Nineteen years old now, Prompto still lives in the Niff district but now he has his own place: a cheap, dirty apartment that he can barely afford and that can barely be counted as livable. But it's something. _His_ something. He got it with his own hard work and money so it means something to him, even if it is a dump.

It's not too different from himself, the human personification of a garbage can.

Noctis surely thought something was up back then, if those concerned looks Prompto can still recall in vivid detail were anything to go by. He just never said anything, which a part of Prompto endlessly appreciates because gods, was he not good at subject changing or deflecting at that age.

He’s got it perfected now. He can deflect like nobody’s business. Which, he is willing to admit, seems Not Good. He should be able to talk about his feelings like a normal person but look at him, the king of not talking about it.

It sucks feeling like he has to hide how he feels, like no one cares in the first place to hear it. But that’s just life. Feeling like no one gives a shit.

It sucks.

.

He sits there for a while. Until the sun begins setting and the sky starts to turn a dark blue.

When he reenters the house, his mother is sitting on the couch. She turns to look at him and he sees how worried she looks. It’s weird to think that this is the same woman who used to yell at him and hit him.

Prompto nods in greeting. He must have been sitting out there for a long time to earn the concern of his mother. “What’s up?” he says, out of lack of anything else to say.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. She’s in the process in standing up when Prompto collapses into the couch. She sits back down.

“Nothing. Just thinking.”

“Oh,” she murmurs. “About us getting back together?”

He feels the urge to nod but shakes his head. “No. Just stuff.”

“Oh,” she says again. “Are you still on your meds?”

“Yeah,” he says. He still is. Been on them since he was 18 so... around a year. Almost two. Sometimes they feel like they work, sometimes they don’t.

His answers were short in hopes of her understanding that he doesn’t want to talk right now. He keeps his eyes firmly on the television, making it seem like he’s barely listening when she is all he hears.

She says nothing further.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a warning: there is a scene that gets fairly explicit in the trauma prompto experienced. its short, only one paragraph, but pls be careful reading this chapter if it could trigger you! or reading this at all lol
> 
> man im really not proud of this chapter? but here ya go

He sees his therapist every two weeks and the other doctor, the one who gives him his meds, every month.

They're both nice women, helpful and caring in a way he's just not used to. But where Vita is pure Lucian through and through, Bellus, his therapist, is that particular shade of blonde just like Prompto, and thus he finds it easier to confide in her.

He walks into her office on one partly cloudy but warm for February afternoon. The room is dimly lit as is usual and the temperature is just right somehow, and she waits for him to sit before she sits herself. When she looks at him, it's with a smile. Just seeing it has him feeling weird. Someone caring about his well being? Yeah right.

"So how are you?" she asks.

.

The session is long. It's only an hour but gods it feels longer. His reluctance to be there and uneasiness of people both work together to make the sessions as long and miserable as possible.

"Are you seeing Vita today?" Bellus asks once they've reached the end of the session.

"Yeah."

"When?"

He shrugs. "In about an hour."

"What are you going to do until then?" she asks and Prompto knows where this is going. He sighs.

"Just wait around."

"Not eat?" she asks. She looks to the wall where the clock resides. "It's about that time."

"I don't have any money," which is only partly true. He has some left over from his last paycheck but he figures it's more important to save it for some unforeseen event rather than feed himself. He tells her this.

"One would argue that feeding yourself, especially when you haven't eaten all day, is more important than something that may or may not happen."

He has nothing to say to that so she lets him leave.

"Seeya," he says quietly. She smiles at him again.

"Goodbye, Prompto."

.

Therapy sessions are always emotionally exhausting so when he arrives home and sits on the couch, he conks out almost immediately, half laying down and half sitting up.

He dreams.

He dreams he's laying on his bed. He's on his stomach. He feels hands on his body, running down his back then they reach his ass and begin the journey back up. He feels a swell of fear rise up within him and threaten to suffocate him. He chokes on it but he can't cry. He can't do anything. All he can do is allow the hands to feel him up. The hands run down his sides.

Then he wakes up to the sound of his phone vibrating.

He gasps and sits upright. He's panting for breath and feeling the material of the couch, trying to deduce if this is real or if the nightmare is still happening. Then he curls his hands into fists and buries his nails into the palm of his hand, thriving at the pain. This is real, this is reality. Nothing can happen to him here.

He sits on the couch for what feels like forever but when he checks his phone it's only been nearly half an hour since he was awoken by his phone. The buzzing was a text message from Noctis.

.

You wanna hang?  
4:54 PM

sure man, im free  
5:21 PM

Cool just got home a while ago so come over whenever. I'm free for the rest of the day.  
5:26 PM

aight im omw  
5:29 PM

.

Prompto knows where Noctis lives. He's been there several times but very rarely do they get to hang out nowadays. The King now is more strict than ever, and he frequently demands the presence of Noctis now that he's graduated from school, hoping to teach him properly how to reign over a country. And, Prompto suspects, he may not like Noctis spending so much time with a commoner, especially one like Prompto. Because of this, they tend to speak over call or text. It's easier than trying to get out of work or royal duties all the time.

Which makes today the first day they'll get to see each other face-to-face after nearly two months.

Prompto, now giddy and fear forgotten, stands up and stretches, then grabs his keys. If he leaves now he should be able to get there in a half hour if he hurries.

He's outside and unchaining his bike before he remembers he forgot to lock his front door in his excitement, and he bolts back up the steps, laughing.

This is the happiest he's felt in a long time, in nearly two months.

.

He wonders sometimes if he has some sort of crush on Noct. It's not hard to see the appeal; he's almost impossibly handsome, he's more kind and thoughtful than you might assume, and he's such a huge nerd that it really makes you forget he's royalty at all.

So yeah, it's not hard to see why Prompto is so fond of him. He supposes he wouldn't mind dating him. Would probably say yes if asked out.

But he hopes he doesn't have a crush on Noctis. Because one, it would not work out at all. He's a prince and will probably marry some princess. Additionally, he's never once shown any interest in the same gender. Thirdly, who's to say that, even if Noctis didn't have to marry some random princess to carry on his line and that he did like guys in the same way Prompto did, he would like Prompto, the human piece of shit?

Lastly, Prompto fears it would make him uncomfortable. All Noctis has ever wanted, he confessed to Prompto once, was a real friend not bound to him by requirement, and the fact that he managed to find that in Prompto, a total moron at best, is amazing and Prompto would never want to take advantage of him like that.

So he hopes that maybe he's just desperate for attention and Noctis is practically the only person who talks to him on a regular basis so it's only normal that he would latch onto him. It's nothing.

Nothing at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not sure if i want promptis in this? idk but heres the start of it lol


End file.
